This is a very strategic moment for the talented Mr. Zuckerberg. The
community ably demonstrated the passion it has for Facebook but in the
bigger picture, it was an awesome demonstration of organizational
power. The community claimed ownership of Facebook. It was a Holy Grail
moment. It's what some brand managers, product developers, service
companies and an array of grassroots-minded organizations pray for. It
was a powerful Web 2.0 moment, too, illustrating how quickly a
connected membership base can mobilize and take action.

I think this strategic moment now creates a decision fork for Facebook:

1) Acknowledge the community ownership by taking the eBay route and
giving the community a voice and a vote in future development of tools
and features or

2) Maintain the wheel of control like the captain of a ship and ask everyone to return to their quarters.

Facebook seems intent on following Fork Number Two. "About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet,
because that’s what I believe in – helping people share information
with the people they want to share it with," Zuckerberg writes,
embracing the notion of information transparency. But then he declares
the demarcation point the community is expected to remain behind: "I’d
encourage you to check
it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook."

I think that this too is the holy grail for public media - we too have to create a space for the Public - We too have to give up our control in the way that eBay has.

This is I think at the heart of our struggle and this is where all the opportunity lies.

Facebook, and similar online communities, are built on trust and the
community members must believe that their personal privacy will be
respected by the site owners. Especially in the case of the closed
communities of Facebook, privacy was paramount. But Facebook seems to
be turning its back on the college and high school audience that helped
make it successful. Instead, Facebook is planning to allow anyone to join
the service. The closed college communities will remain closed to the
general public, but the service itself is trying to become more like
the highly commercialized MySpace in a race for more, more, more
eyeballs on the site.

Facebook, like MySpace, is a business, and the community members are
not human beings in the eyes of Wall Street analysts — they are simply
dollar signs for a valuation for a big sale to a media company. Japan’s
social networking site Mixi recently had an initial public offering,
from which Forrester analyst Charlene Li
extrapolated to mean that Facebook users were worth $18.60 each, for a
total Facebook valuation of $139.5 million. That’s a far cry from the
$2 billion — or $285 per user — that Facebook reportedly wanted in a buyout.

The story of Facebook is the ultimate in dot-com hubris redux from
the late ’90s. A site builds itself up, collects millions of eyeballs
and tries to go public or get bought out. Because going public is more
risky these days, it’s better to sidle up to a sugar daddy like Rupert
Murdoch of News Corp., as MySpace did, or perhaps Yahoo .

But these young turks who want to relive the bad old dot-com boom daze should take a moment and visit Craigslist .
The site rarely adds any new features, and looks largely the same as it
did five or eight years ago. But founder Craig Newmark cares about his
community, and stays in touch with an amazing number of community
members, helping them solve their disputes and set up community
guidelines.

When he plays God, he’s not the vengeful God or angry God or greedy
God. He’s the caring God who hasn’t exploited his community with flashy
advertising and tons of paid walls. He makes enough money to be
profitable, but doesn’t drive away community members.

Hopefully Zuckerberg can see the error of his ways and keep in mind
that the members of his community will only stay in the community if
they feel safe, feel respected and feel heard by him. Otherwise, there
are plenty of other places online for people to socialize, and there’s
no cost to leave and go elsewhere.

…There is anger and confusion in every direction. Many
people are pissed and they can’t fully articulate why. Others are
screaming that they’re overreacting and that nothing changed. When it
comes to bits, that’s true. But the architecture did change this week.
And with it, so did the social realities of the site. Facebook lost
some of its innocence this week. Even when things return to “normal,” a
scar will persist. Yet, the question remains: what will the long-term
social effects of this “privacy trainwreck” be?

This is a very strategic moment for the talented Mr. Zuckerberg. The
community ably demonstrated the passion it has for Facebook but in the
bigger picture, it was an awesome demonstration of organizational
power. The community claimed ownership of Facebook. It was a Holy Grail
moment. It's what some brand managers, product developers, service
companies and an array of grassroots-minded organizations pray for. It
was a powerful Web 2.0 moment, too, illustrating how quickly a
connected membership base can mobilize and take action.

I think this strategic moment now creates a decision fork for Facebook:

1) Acknowledge the community ownership by taking the eBay route and
giving the community a voice and a vote in future development of tools
and features or

2) Maintain the wheel of control like the captain of a ship and ask everyone to return to their quarters.

Facebook seems intent on following Fork Number Two. "About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet,
because that’s what I believe in – helping people share information
with the people they want to share it with," Zuckerberg writes,
embracing the notion of information transparency. But then he declares
the demarcation point the community is expected to remain behind: "I’d
encourage you to check
it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook."

I think that this too is the holy grail for public media - we too have to create a space for the Public - We too have to give up our control in the way that eBay has.

This is I think at the heart of our struggle and this is where all the opportunity lies.